alternative /etc/passwd formats (was: Corrupted passwd file woes)

[Cameron Simpson,Uhmmm..???? Who knows]

>From article <3151 at ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>, by dick at cca.ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski):
| On a different tack, have many people started using some other
| form of storing the data to speed up all access to password 
| information?  Is there some freely available set of software 
| or updates good for one or the other of VAXen running BSD or
| RISC/6000s running AIX?

Well, when I started Uni in '84 we had a couple of PDP11/70s and
a couple of VAXen running a heavily hacked V7 UNIX. /etc/passwd
was an autolocking binary file, and libc had been modified to
know about it... Worked like a charm. Fast. Of course you
couldn't grep /etc/passwd for stuff, but there were a few
extra commands around to get at the info in a nice text
format for scripts or just plain looking around. The PDPs and
one of the VAXen are gone now, but karri still runs it... 
Pete says he wrote the /etc/passwd stuff in '77 or '78.

We currently have about 180 Apollos with 3122 accounts listed.
The Apollos use a loosely coupled database for account information
and /etc/passwd is a special file supported by a subsystem which
generates a standard looking file when you open it for read.
Naturally you can't create account by editting /etc/passwd, but
it's possible to create tools to access the database. They come
with one (edrgy) which gives you access, but it's terribly
interactive (terminally so). I ended up writing a wrapper around
it to provide a subroutine interface to it and then duplicating the
tools we use on karri (above) for account manipulation.

Apollo's approach is the way to go I think. I just wish they'd
document their rgy_$... calls so I could turf my open-pipes-to-
and-from-edrgy approach...

Using a text file when you have more than, say, 50 or 60 users
is a joke.
	- Cameron Simpson
	  cameron at spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au